Universität Rostock - Structure - Quality Assurance - Developing modules - Expenditure of work / learning outcome credit points

"Implementation of a learning outcome credit point system – similar to the ECTS – as appropriate tool to encourage maximum mobility of students. It shall be possible to get credit points even outside the university, for instance by lifelong learning, provided that they are accepted by the relevant university."

Learning outcome credit points display how much work a student has to invest into his/her education. They are awarded for study working hours (work load) – credit points are only awarded to those who study successfully. Thus, students get the credit point related to a certain module only after passing the corresponding examination successfully. 

The implementation of credit points requires a consequent renunciation of semester periods per week (SWS) as central planning item. To help students with their orientation and to meet legal requirements for calculating capacities and teaching obligations, an additional indication of SWS determined as attendance and contact periods is essential.

The proportion between attendance times and self-study times has to be defined newly (and individually for every subject). Still, it is not enough to allocate the possible credit points per academic year to the courses offered so far in a calculation procedure without taking the real student’s workload into consideration. The allocation of credit points to courses results from the proportion between the estimated workload related to this course and the total work load capacity available per academic year.

The working effort must not exceed 30 credit points per term or 60 credit points per academic year. With determined 1500 to 1800 student’s working hours per year distributed to 40 weeks, one credit point correlates with 25 to 30 working hours.

The allocation of the credit points to modules is based on an estimated average work load required for passing the module successfully. Parameters for such an estimation of the average work load of a student are: 

• Participation in courses (times of attendance)
• Autonomous preparation and revision times
• Guided preparation and revision times (e.g. special examination preparations, tutorials)
• Time for elaborating term papers, seminar papers, study papers, assignment paper and final papers
• Periods for examination preparation
• Examination periods
• Industrial placements, if applicable